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Morning,
I have my Multiplus II using the virtual switch to ignore ac and use solar and battery power. This works well during the day when there is sun.
But I would like it to switch to bypass or ac during the nighttime when there is no sun. And save the batteries from being charged and discharged.
I was thinking of using an external time switch but how do I connect this to the multiplus?
I also have a raspberry pi running Venus OS if that will help.
Regards
Paul
I think what you are looking for is the ESS:
https://www.victronenergy.com/live/ess:start
With the ESS-Assistant in the Multi you will use solar power as primary power source.
If there is not enough solar power you will use the battery until the battery is empty.
If there is not enough solar power and the battery is empty you will pass-trough the grid (without charging the battery).
On the next day the solar power is again used as primary power source for your loads and surplus power will be used to charge the battery.
Hi Matthias,
I don't want to use the battery if I don't have to. They are old and have reduced capacity. We have load shedding in South Africa so I need to keep the batteries full for when that happens.
At the moment during the day when there is sun or not everything works well but at night the batteries discharge to 90% and then charge up again which is wasteful.
That is why I want to turn off "ignore ac" in the evening and back on in the mornings.
With ESS you can also setup a minimum SOC or select "keep batteries charged".
With this options the battery will only be discharges to the set SOC or the battery will be only used if the grid fails.
I am also looking for this feature for a camper van. Ive recently set up 'Ignore AC' in VS and have a Cerbo and Smart MPPT with optional AC input and 700W of solar on the roof.
During winter months when the van is parked up it is connected to AC and runs a few small 230v loads through the Multi inverter. When solar is available we want to use this to charge the battery and ignore AC which is now set in VS. What we then need to do is when travelling use the solar, no problem there, but when parked up on a site to be able to switch off the ignore AC so that the battery charges from site power if it hasn't already from solar or if we are using the AC out.
I've seen this request elsewhere but it would be great to have a toggle button on the Cerbo screen or via an input switch contact to toggle the ignore AC on and off so we could choose whether or not to charge from the AC input.
Any chance this feature could be added? Even a button in 'Remote Console' would be useful.
I'm not sure the ESS would be suitable in this case.
This function is already available using Assistants rather than VS. The key to it is wiring a signal pair to an AUX relay on the Multi. You could switch this with a manual toggle switch or Cerbo relay. The Cerbo relay can even be switched via VRM, but there's a coupla links here that you might get some clues from to work out the way that best suits you..
https://www.victronenergy.com/live/drafts:acin_ignore_timer_using_ccgx_gen_start_stop_example
https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/52652/multiplus-mains-led-flashing-1.html
Thank you John this is most helpful. The second link looks to be the exact thing I am looking for.
